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OwenTheEnchanter
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« Reply #30 on: November 12, 2008, 03:20:41 pm » |
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90% of what you said about painter is just wrong, I agree with you Oath is a bad match up but there are cards you can play to turn that around (Ray of Revelation, Spawning Pit etc).
Regarding Ichorid, every deck has a bad Ichorid match up. Ichorid doesn't lose to any decks it just loses to certain cards and I can just Ancient Grudge/Ingot Chewer your Chalice or Pithing Needle and Tormod's Crypt you.
Painters best match up is fish, g1 it can be hard to win through a Null Rod but you can always Tinker up DSC or just REB the Rod and win. Also Tarmogoyf is in the sb for a reason other than just being a good card, fish players will board in Gaea's Blessing, Extirpate, artifact removal, and a lot of super narrow cards that stop your combo then they are just cold to a 5/6. With the artifact removal Dreadnaught and Null Rod are nonfactors.
Painter has very good matchups against Fish, Stax, and Drain decks. Storm can be very close and Ichorid/Oath are bad matchups so I dont see how it should be 1% of the metagame.
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IDK why you're looking for so much credibility: You top 8ed a couple tournaments. Nice Job! |
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meadbert
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« Reply #31 on: November 12, 2008, 06:16:49 pm » |
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Painter has very good matchups against Fish, Stax, and Drain decks. Storm can be very close and Ichorid/Oath are bad matchups so I dont see how it should be 1% of the metagame.
I think we agree on a lot more than 10% of what I said. In my testing the Painter deck that you took to gencon has done the best so what you say here is very relevant. There were no Stax decks and no other non Oath Drain decks in the hypothetical meta that I listed. This leaves Fish as your main advantageous matchup by your own admission. Ichorid and Oath were there thus the bad matchups. Also, some, but no all of the Ichorid decks had DSC in the board. Another had Ancient Grudges in the board. Painter did just fine against the Dredge deck with neither, but struggled against the other two. About all of this I think we agree. We agree that IT is a slightly advantageous matchup for Painter. The only point we disagree on seems to be Painter versus BUG Fish. What is interesting is how far apart we are on this one matchup. I trust your testing results more than mine here since I am sure you have tested Painter far more than me, but in my testing BUG Fish has done significantly better. There were no Gaea's Blessings and I did not board in Extirpate. I did board in something like 1 or 2 Threads of Disloyalty, but mostly kept the main board for BUG Fish. For Painter I did this: +3 Trops +4 Goyf -1 Island -1 Mana Crypt -1 Tormod's Crypt -1 Gifts -1 Fact -1 Top -1 Vamp You mentioned Tinker->DSC as a strong play for Painter, but the list I tested had no DSC so this was not an option. I would not be surprised if DSC by himself significantly improved this matchup. In fact I have been finding that Tinker->DSC is a very strong strategy in general against BUG Fish and I would be tempted to add it to IT's board as well. EDIT: Full board plan for BUG Fish was: -4 Cursecatcher +2 Threads +2 Predator The trouble I ran into was color screw. Painter really wants to fetch out Tropical Island for Goyf and Volcanic Island for Red Blast (The only way to remove Rod). This creates trouble because BUG Fish has Wastes, Strip and Stifles. Frequently Painter would have enough mana sources, but they would not produce the color needed. Painter would have Yawg but no black or Goyf but no green or REB to remove Rod, but no Red. I have played exactly 12 games of Painter versus BUG FIsh which is not that many and I may have sideboarded incorrectly. I would appreciate it if you could post a better sideboarding strategy so I can retest. |
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T1: Arsenal
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Smmenen
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« Reply #32 on: November 13, 2008, 12:08:32 pm » |
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@meadbert, did you test the TPS list with 1 Fact or Fiction over the 2nd Grim Tutor? It does affect your overall blue count and the consistency of Force of Will. If you hadn't, I suggest you make that change in the future. Also, do not test Top in TPS. It is garbage. And if you need tips for getting better with it, I wrote a three part primer for SCG.
What is your IT list?
Does it have Drains maindeck?
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Harlequin
Full Members
Basic User
Posts: 1860
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« Reply #33 on: November 13, 2008, 12:48:58 pm » |
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90% of what you said about painter is just wrong, I agree with you Oath is a bad match up but there are cards you can play to turn that around (Ray of Revelation, Spawning Pit etc).
Regarding Ichorid, every deck has a bad Ichorid match up. Ichorid doesn't lose to any decks it just loses to certain cards and I can just Ancient Grudge/Ingot Chewer your Chalice or Pithing Needle and Tormod's Crypt you.
Painters best match up is fish, g1 it can be hard to win through a Null Rod but you can always Tinker up DSC or just REB the Rod and win. Also Tarmogoyf is in the sb for a reason other than just being a good card, fish players will board in Gaea's Blessing, Extirpate, artifact removal, and a lot of super narrow cards that stop your combo then they are just cold to a 5/6. With the artifact removal Dreadnaught and Null Rod are nonfactors.
Painter has very good matchups against Fish, Stax, and Drain decks. Storm can be very close and Ichorid/Oath are bad matchups so I dont see how it should be 1% of the metagame.
I've been looking for a good word for this, but for lack of a better term I'll call it the "Optimistic Fallacy." The Fallacy is that: A Deck will improve its win chances post side. Its a fairly simple looking thought. Hey, the sideboard exist to improve my stratigy for game 2, therefor If my stratigy improves I should have better odds of winning, right? No. The simple fact is that this is impossible. Lets say that two decks are evenly matched for game 1 at 50:50. In order for one deck to improve its odds of winning, the other deck -has- to lose odds. So if you improve your deck, and they do not then the odds slide to 60:40. But they will never be 60:60. The fallacy is simply making the assumption that because I replace bad cards with good cards, my match is now better. The poster imply, by bringing in X, Y, and Z in these match ups - you ~improve~ you chances of winning the match. Now, I'm not saying that Painters post board matches are better or worse. Just sora musing poetic about the danger of saying that all your 'bad' matchs pre-board will favorable post board - made on the assumption that your cards are now better. On the topic of Painter. I think the grace period for it being a great deck has passed. People know how to beat it. They know that you can't win simply by putting a blessing in the sideboard. They understand the fundamentals, and this put the deck in a dangerous possision of being basically stuck somewher between combo and control slaver; and ulimatly not as powerful as either. |
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wiley
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« Reply #34 on: November 13, 2008, 01:39:33 pm » |
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...Also, do not test Top in TPS. It is garbage. ...
What is your IT list?
Does it have Drains maindeck?
Unless he has been keeping something from his team mates I don't think he had top in any of the storm decks he has been testing, perhaps you saw the sideboarding strategy for painter and got them confused? Also, here is the IT list Bert tested, it has 2 mana drain main: IT:
2 BloodestainedMire
4 PollutedDelta
1 FloodedStrand
3 UndergroundSea
1 Swamp
2 Island
1 BlackLotus
1 LotusPetal
1 MoxRuby
1 MoxJet
1 MoxSapphire
1 MoxEmerald
1 MoxPearl
1 ManaVault
1 SolRing
1 ManaCrypt
1 Yawgmoth'sBargain
1 Necropotence
1 TendrilsOfAgony
2 GrimTutor
1 Yawgmoth'sWill
1 DemonicTutor
4 Duress
2 CabalRitual
4 DarkRitual
1 VampiricTutor
2 DeepAnalysis
1 Timetwister
1 MerchantScroll
1 TimeWalk
1 Ponder
4 ForceOfWill
3 Intuition
1 Rebuild
2 ManaDrain
1 AncestralRecall
1 Brainstorm
1 MysticalTutor
sideboard
3 Tormod'sCrypt
3 PhyrexianNegator
3 YixlidJailer
3 Extirpate
3 HurklesRecall (Sorry if I leaked any super secret tech on this one Bert) Honestly I have not tested with or against IT as I did not expect to play with or against it in the local tournaments. I have settled into BUG Fish and Dredge as my two decks of choice, though I may start testing IT if time allows. In my personal testing, painter (both Vroman and Owen versions) have fared less than awesome. Vroman's list was more stable but lacked some on the power threshold for the deck whereas Owen's version had the power but, like Bert said, it couldn't use it in a timely manner an unnerving amount of the time. Tinker->Colossus might have helped tremendously in a lot of games but this was the list I tested: Turtenwald R/B/U Painter
4 PollutedDelta
2 FloodedStrand
3 VolcanicIsland
2 UndergroundSea
3 Island
1 TolarianAcademy
1 BlackLotus
1 LotusPetal
1 MoxRuby
1 MoxJet
1 MoxSapphire
1 MoxEmerald
1 MoxPearl
1 SolRing
1 ManaCrypt
2 Grindstone
1 Sensei'sDivingTop
1 EngineeredExplosives
1 Tormod'sCrypt
3 Painter'sServant
2 Pyroblast
3 RedElementalBlast
1 Yawgmoth'sWill
1 DemonicTutor
1 VampiricTutor
1 Tinker
1 MerchantScroll
1 TimeWalk
1 Ponder
4 ForceOfWill
1 FactOrFiction
1 GiftsUngiven
4 ThirstForKnowledge
3 ManaDrain
1 AncestralRecall
1 Brainstorm
1 MysticalTutor
sideboard
3 TropicalIsland
1 PithingNeedle
1 ChaliceOfTheVoid
2 Tormod'sCrypt
1 IngotChewer
2 AncientGrudge
1 LeylineOfTheVoid
4 Targmogoyf Note that it has no big man. Since I was not a guru with the deck at the time that I tested it I never tried to remove cards for tinkolossus. I also didn't see a way to rework the side to include ray or pit. Tarmos became less awesome when they were facing down twins across the thin red line so the BUG fish match up was decidedly less than awesome compared to every other kind of fish (which painter handled fairly well). Your best bet against dredge was to race them and try to hold back ancestral if at all possible. Crypt was nice to have but it rarely helped unless you could land a painter and either stone them or get rid of bazaar, which need to happen very early, or else it didn't make a difference. Keeping and hand in the hopes to 'slow down ichorid' was unviable for painter. That said, I don't understand Nash Equilibrium so I have no clue how Bert came up with the 1% figure. |
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Team Arsenal
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Smmenen
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« Reply #35 on: November 13, 2008, 01:59:13 pm » |
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90% of what you said about painter is just wrong, I agree with you Oath is a bad match up but there are cards you can play to turn that around (Ray of Revelation, Spawning Pit etc).
Regarding Ichorid, every deck has a bad Ichorid match up. Ichorid doesn't lose to any decks it just loses to certain cards and I can just Ancient Grudge/Ingot Chewer your Chalice or Pithing Needle and Tormod's Crypt you.
Painters best match up is fish, g1 it can be hard to win through a Null Rod but you can always Tinker up DSC or just REB the Rod and win. Also Tarmogoyf is in the sb for a reason other than just being a good card, fish players will board in Gaea's Blessing, Extirpate, artifact removal, and a lot of super narrow cards that stop your combo then they are just cold to a 5/6. With the artifact removal Dreadnaught and Null Rod are nonfactors.
Painter has very good matchups against Fish, Stax, and Drain decks. Storm can be very close and Ichorid/Oath are bad matchups so I dont see how it should be 1% of the metagame.
I've been looking for a good word for this, but for lack of a better term I'll call it the "Optimistic Fallacy." The Fallacy is that: A Deck will improve its win chances post side. Its a fairly simple looking thought. Hey, the sideboard exist to improve my stratigy for game 2, therefor If my stratigy improves I should have better odds of winning, right? No. Well put! The Optimistic Fallacy is very prevalent in Magic. People assume that if they just pack SB cards, they will win, not accounting for the fact that the opponent is going to do the same thing. I've noticed how Mana Drain pilots assume that if they just put some Duresses in their sb they think that they will be suddenly favorable in the combo match. |
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meadbert
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« Reply #36 on: November 13, 2008, 02:14:52 pm » |
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Nash equilibrium is a concept in game theory that was invented by John Nash (Guy from "A Beautiful Mind")
The equilibrium is when each player's strategy is thus that even if his opponents knew it they could do no better.
A simple example would be football. If the offense can run or pass and the defense can guess run or pass then how often should each do which.
First you would need to know the number of yards per play.
If Passing plays averaged 10 or 4 yards depending on whether your opponent guessed correctly and running plays averaged 5 or 3 yards depending on how your opponent guesses then the Nash Equilibrium would be:
Offense Run 75% of time, Pass 25% of time.
Defense Guess Pass 6/7 of the time, Guess Run 1/7 of the time.
The idea is that even if the Defense knows the that the offenses strategy it can do no better than Guess Pass 6/7 of the time.
Meanwhile even if the offense knows the defense's strategy it can do no better than run 75% of the time.
Note that Passing seems like the much stronger play for the offense since 10-4 yards is better than 5-3 yards, but according to the Nash equilibrium the offense is better off running most of the time. The reason is that by guessing Pass the defense is helping itself more than by guessing Run since the difference between 5 and 3 is small compared to 10 and 4. This means the defense should guess Pass most of the time and thus the offense is better of running most of the time.
The same thing shows up with sideboard against Dredge. Because each Dredge sideboard card packs more of a punch than say Duress does against combo, there is a stronger incentive for decks to pack a lot of dredge sideboard cards. Because most decks have so much dredge hate it makes dredge a worse choice than it would be otherwise.
When I talk about the Nash Equilibrium of Magic meta games I mean this. For which meta game would there be no deck such that picking that deck would win more than 50% of games in that meta.
Below is what I wrote as the Nash Equilibrium:
IT 36%
Dredge 23%
Oath 21%
BUG Fish 19%
Painter 1%
The idea is that none of the 5 decks above would win more than 51% of their games against that meta. For each matchup I have assigned the probability of each deck winning and this assumes that these probabilities are correct.
It is important to point out that the above list does not indicate how good each deck is. Just as Passing seems much better than running, but the optimal strategy is to run, it also might be the case that Painter is much better than IT, but the optimal strategy is to play a lot of IT.
Also the Nash Equilibrium I use is over simplified since it assumes static sideboards and meta slots. In reality, if Dredge were 23% of the meta, there would be far more hate packed into sideboards, while if Painter dipped below 5% Gaea's Blessings would disappear.
Typically the deck at the top is the deck who has the best worst matchup. In this case IT's worst matchups were Dredge and Painter and neither is terrible thus there is no deck that crushes IT so playing IT is the "safe" play. Painter, which may be a strong deck in general and in fact defeats IT is not a safe choice at all since if Painter were ever a significant part of the meta then Oath could be played to crush it. This is over simplified and does not consider that Ray of Revelation or Spawning Pit could be added to the board as Owen suggested, but this why Painter shows up so low. It is that it is a bad deck as much as it has one specific bad matchup.
A simple way to explain how I come to these numbers is this:
Start with an empty meta game.
Determine which deck does the best against the current metagame and add it to the meta game.
Repeat this 100 times.
I have a C program that does this if anyone wants it.
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OwenTheEnchanter
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« Reply #37 on: November 13, 2008, 02:46:43 pm » |
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I'm not going to get into the voodoo theory based on people not understanding how sideboarding works but I have played the deck quite a bit and know how alot of the matchups play out. Im not just pulling these situations out of my ass while just guessing what sideboard cards are good against what decks, ive played them in multiple tournaments and they work. On the topic of Painter. I think the grace period for it being a great deck has passed. People know how to beat it. They know that you can't win simply by putting a blessing in the sideboard. They understand the fundamentals, and this put the deck in a dangerous possision of being basically stuck somewher between combo and control slaver; and ulimatly not as powerful as either.
That said, I agree with this statement. |
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IDK why you're looking for so much credibility: You top 8ed a couple tournaments. Nice Job! |
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meadbert
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« Reply #38 on: November 13, 2008, 06:07:15 pm » |
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@meadbert, did you test the TPS list with 1 Fact or Fiction over the 2nd Grim Tutor? It does affect your overall blue count and the consistency of Force of Will. If you hadn't, I suggest you make that change in the future. Also, do not test Top in TPS. It is garbage. And if you need tips for getting better with it, I wrote a three part primer for SCG.
The primers are great and very helpful. I have been running Fact and I did not test Top. The list I used was straight from one of your articles. My main complaint was that with Tinker->DSC in the main, I did not care much for the Goyfs in the board. I did go back and review my notes on TPS and it was losing to a bunch of decks that I have since removed from the Gauntlet so it may be time to go back and test again. It did lose to Mana Dredge, but it did fine against the other dredge decks. It also lost to Vinci Drain Tendrils, Becker Drain Tendrils and Beaumont B/U Painter, but as I mentioned all have already been removed from the Gauntlet. Generally it seems that TPS does not like decks that pack Force, Duress and Drain in the maindeck as all three of those do. This also leads me to believe that TPS will struggle with IT, but I have not tested that yet. I have also not tested TPS versus Oath or BUG Fish so I should go back and do that. My whole motivation in bumping this thread was that it seems to me that Becker's version of IT is solid metagame contender right now. Has anyone else (Eric?) been testing IT and if so how has it been doing? |
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T1: Arsenal
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IthilanorStPete
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« Reply #39 on: November 14, 2008, 07:17:17 am » |
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Nash equilibrium is a concept in game theory that was invented by John Nash (Guy from "A Beautiful Mind")
The equilibrium is when each player's strategy is thus that even if his opponents knew it they could do no better.
A simple example would be football. If the offense can run or pass and the defense can guess run or pass then how often should each do which.
First you would need to know the number of yards per play.
If Passing plays averaged 10 or 4 yards depending on whether your opponent guessed correctly and running plays averaged 5 or 3 yards depending on how your opponent guesses then the Nash Equilibrium would be:
Offense Run 75% of time, Pass 25% of time.
Defense Guess Pass 6/7 of the time, Guess Run 1/7 of the time.
The idea is that even if the Defense knows the that the offenses strategy it can do no better than Guess Pass 6/7 of the time.
Meanwhile even if the offense knows the defense's strategy it can do no better than run 75% of the time.
Note that Passing seems like the much stronger play for the offense since 10-4 yards is better than 5-3 yards, but according to the Nash equilibrium the offense is better off running most of the time. The reason is that by guessing Pass the defense is helping itself more than by guessing Run since the difference between 5 and 3 is small compared to 10 and 4. This means the defense should guess Pass most of the time and thus the offense is better of running most of the time.
The same thing shows up with sideboard against Dredge. Because each Dredge sideboard card packs more of a punch than say Duress does against combo, there is a stronger incentive for decks to pack a lot of dredge sideboard cards. Because most decks have so much dredge hate it makes dredge a worse choice than it would be otherwise.
When I talk about the Nash Equilibrium of Magic meta games I mean this. For which meta game would there be no deck such that picking that deck would win more than 50% of games in that meta.
Below is what I wrote as the Nash Equilibrium:
IT 36%
Dredge 23%
Oath 21%
BUG Fish 19%
Painter 1%
The idea is that none of the 5 decks above would win more than 51% of their games against that meta. For each matchup I have assigned the probability of each deck winning and this assumes that these probabilities are correct.
It is important to point out that the above list does not indicate how good each deck is. Just as Passing seems much better than running, but the optimal strategy is to run, it also might be the case that Painter is much better than IT, but the optimal strategy is to play a lot of IT.
Also the Nash Equilibrium I use is over simplified since it assumes static sideboards and meta slots. In reality, if Dredge were 23% of the meta, there would be far more hate packed into sideboards, while if Painter dipped below 5% Gaea's Blessings would disappear.
Typically the deck at the top is the deck who has the best worst matchup. In this case IT's worst matchups were Dredge and Painter and neither is terrible thus there is no deck that crushes IT so playing IT is the "safe" play. Painter, which may be a strong deck in general and in fact defeats IT is not a safe choice at all since if Painter were ever a significant part of the meta then Oath could be played to crush it. This is over simplified and does not consider that Ray of Revelation or Spawning Pit could be added to the board as Owen suggested, but this why Painter shows up so low. It is that it is a bad deck as much as it has one specific bad matchup.
A simple way to explain how I come to these numbers is this:
Start with an empty meta game.
Determine which deck does the best against the current metagame and add it to the meta game.
Repeat this 100 times.
I have a C program that does this if anyone wants it.
Can you PM me that program, please? Sounds really interesting. |
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Odd mutation
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« Reply #40 on: November 14, 2008, 07:34:57 am » |
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On the topic of Painter. I think the grace period for it being a great deck has passed. People know how to beat it. They know that you can't win simply by putting a blessing in the sideboard. They understand the fundamentals, and this put the deck in a dangerous possision of being basically stuck somewher between combo and control slaver; and ulimatly not as powerful as either.
I've come to the same conclusion. I've been playing the deck in several tournements lately, missing top 8 in the final round when playing against the better players. I'm shifting to Control Slaver... Robrecht. |
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Dr.KnowMaD
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« Reply #41 on: November 16, 2008, 01:56:06 am » |
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I agree with the Bug being awesome. It has put up some really impressive results and I think it's definitely a hallmark of fish.
My understanding is that it was made to be a monster of the current meta, but will it be able to withstand a good amount of time/change?
If it can be resilient and adjust than I will say it's a top dogg. If not, can I at least say that Fish as a whole is a serious contender? Other variations have done well within there respected metas while the ability to adapt has kept the archetype around. Either way its a pain in the ass to play against, especially Bug.
Dr.KnowMaD
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Who was that masked man?
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